Gadgets
Why Is John Cena Better in The Suicide Squad Than Fast & Furious 9?
On this episode of Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, host Akhil Arora talks with Chief Sub Editor Shayak Majumdar, who is steeped in DC comic books, to discuss The Suicide Squad.
Spoiler alert: If you are planning to watch The Suicide Squad but have not yet watched it, you should not listen to our discussion right away and watch the movie first.
The Suicide Squad has some notable similarities with 2018’s Deadpool 2. Although it has no direct relation with the film that was based on the Marvel Comics character Deadpool, the movie does have the storyline that is full of blood and deaths that reminds us of the earlier title.
James Gunn, the director and writer of The Suicide Squad, brings his own unique take on everything. One of the key things that makes the movie different from other superhero films that have a list of villains is the mass killing, even of main characters. Of course, Gunn promised this before the release.
The Suicide Squad Review: More Than DC’s Guardians of the Galaxy
In the second half of the episode, Akhil is joined by Ali Pardiwala and Jasmin Jose, two of our Fast & Furious fans, to speak about the ninth chapter in the series, F9. The movie was released internationally in May and is coming to Indian cinemas on August 19. Universal Pictures had originally planned to release Fast & Furious 9 in 2020, but was delayed several times — one of which was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spoiler alert: You should not listen to our discussion if you are planning to watch Fast & Furious 9 but have not yet watched it.
Fast & Furious 9 is directed by Justin Lin and is the sequel to Fast & Furious 8 (also known as The Fate of the Furious) that was released in 2017. Though honestly, there’s little connect from one Fast chapter to the next. The nearly two-and-a-half hours long movie brings back Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto with Cena playing his younger brother Jakob Toretto. Also returning are Michelle Rodriguez as Letty Oritz, Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Tej Parker, among other actors.
Naturally, F9 continues the franchise’s love for many unrealistic, physics-defying action scenes. The leading characters of the movie are also just invincible — a joke the movie itself is in on — and don’t die even when they fall from a great height, or face a severe accident. They are essentially superheroes, like in The Suicide Squad.
Fast & Furious 9 Speeds Past $500 Million Box Office, a First for Hollywood in COVID-19 Pandemic
We talk about all this and much more in our discussion. You can listen to it in detail by hitting the play button on the audio player embedded above. You can also follow the Gadgets 360 podcast on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review.
New Orbital episodes release every Friday, so make sure to tune in regularly.
Gadgets
Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
Gadgets
BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Gadgets
Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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